Few people know much about Mare Island even though it’s only 35 miles from San Francisco, was once the largest military shipyard on the West Coast, and is officially a National Historic Landmark. A grand long-range vision is in the works for this 5,600-acre land spit--for Mare Island is actually not an island, it’s a peninsula jutting out into San Pablo Bay at the mouth of the Napa River. If that vision materializes--and that is a big “if”--Mare Island will become a vibrant part of the city of Vallejo, with a lively waterfront and residential communities linked by parks and trails. It will also be a magnet for visitors interested in nature and history. With some 500 historic buildings, great views of bay waters, and 3,500 acres of tidal wetlands rich with wildlife, this is an extraordinary place.

Although it has the potential of becoming a great place to live, work, and visit, right now the decomissioned naval shipyard lies in an odd state of inbetween-ness, stalled in transition from its storied past to a potentially rich future. Today Mare Island is a strange collage of huge derelict structures, a beautifully maintained golf course (the oldest west of the Mississippi), handsome historic buildings, and new subdivisions with manicured lawns. This spring, ospreys were nesting on drydock cranes, and great blue herons had established “condos”--several nests on top of each other--on some stadium light poles. But few people were to be seen.

The Navy bought what is now the Mare Island peninsula in 1854. The first ship was constructed here in 1859, a paddle-wheel gunboat built of white oak from Petaluma. One of the last, built in 1966, was the nuclear submarine Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. At the height of the shipyard’s productivity during World War II, more than 46,000 people worked here, servicing hundreds of vessels.
The closing of the base in 1996 launched the current chapter of Mare Island’s history. The Navy transferred most of the land to the City of Vallejo, which signed over fee title to 657 acres in the island’s core to Lennar Mare Island LLC, a Florida-based corporation the City chose as master developer.

For this parcel the City approved a reuse plan that provides for historic and natural resource protection and restoration, construction of 1,400 new homes, an 83-acre Town Center with businesses to serve the new residents, and for infrastructure and recreational amenities, including parks and trails. The remaining developable land, about 200 acres on the northern side of the island, may become a medical research and education complex. The City has been negotiating with Touro University, a chiropractic educational institution based in New York, which would build a campus that would include a cancer research center. Touro already has facilities on Mare Island.

Twelve years after the base closure, however, the City’s redevelopment effort has hit a number of snags. Hazardous waste cleanup operations, paid for by the Navy but carried out by the City, are way behind schedule, and an optimistic estimate is for completion by 2013. Gil Hollingsworth, Mare Island conversion program manager for the City, said he hopes that cleanup of 3,000 acres on the western side of the island, which are mostly wetlands, will be completed this year. The rest is a question mark, as the full extent of hazardous waste pollution has not been determined. The City can sell or lease parcels, however, as soon as they are cleaned up and approved by the appropriate agencies, he said.

On May 23, the City of Vallejo filed for bankrupcy, but when asked what the effect on Mare Island would be, Hollingsworth said: “None whatsoever” because “all the money generated on Mare Island from leases, etc.,” goes into a separate account and is spent on Mare Island. The original intent of that arrangement was to protect taxpayers from having to pay for improvements on the island, he explained.

The housing-market slump has hit hard, however. No new homes have been built for a year, Hollingsworth said. Of 1,400 called for in the City’s redevelopment plan, only 230 have been completed thus far, according to Lennar spokesman Jason Keadjian. All but three have been sold, Hollingsworth said in mid-May, but “a lot are available for resale.”

In August 2007, the Vallejo City Council approved the map of Lennar’s Town Center site, where several developers are interested in building banks, dry cleaning facilities, or small grocery stores. Environmental cleanup is incomplete, however, so that’s on hold. Meanwhile, the new subdivisions feel a bit like ghost towns, and some of the first residents are getting restless waiting for services, and more neighbors.

Where Do You Buy Milk?
Tim Christie, 30, lives on a quiet street lined with impeccably landscaped Spanish- and Colonial-style homes, most of them empty. “Just about the only things you hear at night are the frogs,” Christie said. “It’s nice, it puts you to sleep. If there was at least one convenience store on Mare Island, I’d probably never leave, except to go to work.”

His satisfaction is not shared by some of his neighbors. “We hate it here,” said a woman who did not want her name used, pulling her little daughter in a wagon along Captains’ Row, a tree-shaded street lined with mansions that once housed top Navy brass. She said she moved to Mare Island with her husband and child two and a half years ago, attracted by its affordability and also by the City’s redevelopment plan. Now they have put their house on the market. “We feel isolated out here,” she said. “It [a planned retail center] would be great, but they’re saying it won’t be done until 2010, so wait that long for a grocery store? I don’t think so.”

The nearest large grocery store is on the other side of the Napa River, nearly three miles away. None of the services one expects in a community exist here. There is no coffee shop, no place to buy ice, or diapers, or a beer on Mare Island.

Fiona Varley, 47, bought a new 2,600-square-foot home in 2006. “Why did I move out here? I’d seen something on the TV about it and I thought, ‘That looks interesting,’”she said. “Both my parents were in the Navy, so coming on to an ex-naval base was very comforting. . . .. This is, in the long term, a very good investment, but like everybody, in the short term we’re all having a heart attack.”

Lennar saw the glass as half full. “We have now more than 230 homeowners on the island after years of nobody living on the island,” spokesman Jason Keadjian said in May. Work has continued on other aspects of the reuse plan: cleanup, demolition, and infrastructure improvements. On June 8, Lennar Mare Island LLC declared bankruptcy.

Converting a military base to new civilian uses is a contentious and time-consuming process, and Mare Island is no exception. The City’s original master plan has been revised several times in response to comments from citizens, residents, the developer, and various groups and organizations. Most recently it was amended to protect certain buildings after historic preservation organizations threatened to sue the City and Lennar to keep them from being demolished.

Certainly part of the problem is that Mare Island is not easily accessible. There are two ways to get here: either by taking Highway 80 and then Route 29, or via Highway 37 from Marin County, across miles of wetlands at the top of San Pablo Bay.

Off 37 there’s a sneaky little exit--easy to miss, even if you’re paying attention--that takes you to the northern gate of the shipyard. From here you enter a wasteland of railroad tracks and industrial buildings that look like they haven’t been used in decades. Signs of the $120-million cleanup are everywhere. Tarp-covered mounds of contaminated dirt loom along the main roads--not exactly an invitation to move in. Ditches with contaminated water are cordoned off by orange tape, and the former hazardous waste landfill is covered with black plastic and surrounded by a deep moat and tracts of dirt.

Many of the most important historic buildings stand within an area that has been designated the “Historic Core.” It includes Captains’ Row; the oldest Navy arsenal; Drydock Number 1, beautifully sculpted of granite from the Sierra foothills; and St. Peter’s Chapel, built in 1901, with 29 stained glass windows designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, 16 of them signed. Following the destruction of the chapel at Annapolis by fire, this is now the oldest naval chapel in the nation. These buildings pose a challenge, as there are stringent rules for converting them to other uses.

At the southern tip of the island is a beautiful hilltop slated to become a 215-acre regional park. It is to include a 150-year-old cemetery--the oldest naval cemetery on the West Coast--and offers sweeping views that take in Mt. Diablo, Mt. Tamalpais, and the Carquinez Bridge. A vast expanse of green and brown wetlands stretches out west and north. Currently, these proposed parklands are only open by guided tour and for special events; the Navy has not yet assured the City that it’s free of unexploded munitions.

Road Work Ahead
Little by little, the future is being coaxed into sight. Most vacant buildings on Mare Island are now slated for either demolition or reuse. About 2,000 people work on the island, including those on cleanup operations. The U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Regional headquarters is here, as is a field station for the U.S. Geological Survey. About 36 businesses have set up shop on the island. The only retail operation, however, is a taco truck. On Mare Island Strait, 12 artists have studios in a cavernous concrete building.

Myrna Hayes, co-chair of the Restoration Advisory Board for 14 years, meets monthly with representatives of the Navy, City, federal and state agencies, and Lennar to talk about about the environmental cleanup and other issues. Not only Mare Island but the entire city of Vallejo is in transition, as she sees it. In the past its economy was based on serving Navy personnel, she said, but now it is moving into the entrepreneurial mode. Because the City is in such dire financial straits at present, “whatever happens at Mare Island will come from the people, not exclusively from government.” She would like to see a Mare Island Trust established, something like the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, or a partnership such as that between the National Park Service and the nonprofit Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which raised the funds and led the way in the transformation of Crissy Field and some other areas in San Francisco’s Presidio.

Meanwhile, Hayes and others are working to put Mare Island’s natural and historic heritage on Bay Area residents’ mental map. The annual Flyway Festival, which Hayes co-founded in 1996, brings thousands in for guided wildlife tours for three days in winter. Arc Ecology offers monthly outings, to watch birds, view the moon, paint the landscape, learn about history. The Sierra Club and Audubon Society also offer hikes. Next August 8 and 9, during the annual Mare Faire, the Port Chicago tragedy will be commemorated.

On July 17, 1944, 320 Navy men, 202 of them African-American, were killed in a series of giant ammunition explosions at nearby Port Chicago. Afterwards, while their surviving white officers were given leave to recover from the trauma, 258 African-American sailors at the segregated naval base were ordered to resume loading bombs and ammunition aboard ships. They refused to be ferried over to Mare Island for that purpose and were arrested in Vallejo, according to Jim Kern, curator and executive director of Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum. Fifty were tried by court martial and found guilty of mutiny; 208 were discharged for bad conduct.

That story is part of the shipyard’s history, along with many that are less disturbing to remember. In the future, visitors will be able to hear many of them when they come to Mare Island. They might also learn that Miwok-Costanoan people were here for at least 2,000 years before the first Europeans saw the place, and that current inhabitants include a population of the endangered saltmarsh harvest mouse, which lives in pickleweed along the shore.

“My own personal dream,” Hayes said, “is of year-round daily public access to nature and heritage sites on Mare Island, of the regional park linked to trails and interpretive centers, of nature and heritage tourism that benefits not only the tourists but also the City and the region.”

Current human residents will have to wait for that dream--or even a community--to materialize here. The City’s and its master developer’s bankruptcies are big new bumps on the road ahead. Nevertheless, Mare Island has the potential to make that wait worthwhile.

Mark Simborg, a freelance writer, lives in San Francisco.